On August 8, President Trump spoke to the opioid crisis in this country and declined to declare a national emergency as recommended by the “President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.” Instead, the President emphasized the law and order aspects of the problem and the importance of preventing drug use in the first place since addiction is so hard to overcome. The Commission will make a final report in the fall. The recently released interim report makes eight...

Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to...

By World Health Organization (photo by WHO/Malin Bring) The findings of a new study on the life-course health consequences and associated annual costs of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) show that preventable trauma in childhood costs north America and the European Region US$ 1.3 trillion a year. The article, published in the Lancet and co-authored by Dinesh Sethi and Jonathon Passmore, Programme Manager, Violence and Injury Prevention, WHO/Europe, looks at the legacy of ACEs and their...

The United States is on the threshold of advancing much needed improvements in child and population well-being by addressing the epidemic of adverse childhood experiences and finding ways to come together, use what we know, and heal and catalyze a new epidemic of child and family flourishing. A special issue of Academic Pediatrics highlights new national research with inspiring commentaries across a wide range of leaders, each of whom calls out the critical importance of an immediate, strong...

U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) (above) delivered a strong and passionate call to address childhood adversity to reap a “huge payback” in combating addiction, family violence, and poor education -- the “challenges that confront American families.” [For a video of the briefing, click here . It begins at 17:13 minutes with the first presentation by Andrea Blanch. The sound improves at 23:11 minutes when Sen. Heitkamp's remarks begin.] The July 14th event was the second of three...

A new policy brief (attached) issued this week by the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) forcefully develops the case for trauma-informed approaches to address the opioid crisis—to prevent and treat addiction—based on strong evidence that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at the root of the crisis. CTIPP is a national organization that advocates for trauma-informed prevention and treatment programs at the federal, state and local levels. Successful strategies to...

Article written by Sandra L. Bloom, MD In 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot by an assassin—one bullet to his arm and another to his back. Physicians rushed to care for him, believing that he had survivable injuries. The discovery of microbes as the origin of infectious processes was still new, and although Joseph Lister’s pioneering work in antisepsis was known to American doctors, and Lister himself had visited America in 1876, few doctors had confidence in it, and none of the...

Less then 5 years ago long-time trauma informed advocates, Sandra Bloom, MD and Andrea Blanch, PhD, brought together a small group of similarly-minded folks to talk about forming a new national organization focused on trauma informed policy and practice. Months later the Campaign for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice CTIPP was born. In May of 2019, CTIPP was selected by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to receive its Distinguished Service Award for meritorious service to the...

The hospital where I was recently treated for a blood clot, showing the facade as it was when I was a four-year old child being treated for burns _____________________________________________________ For over a decade I was a family therapist. Before that, an educator. In the past 20 years have dedicated myself to writing curriculum and designing trainings for Lakeside Global Institute primarily around the subject of trauma. I was honored when Bruce Perry invited me to be a fellow with the...

Governor Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania When Governor Tom Wolf’s office announced the release of “Trauma-Informed PA: A Plan to Make Pennsylvania a Trauma-Informed, Healing-Centered State” on July 27, it was a significant milestone in the state becoming trauma-informed but only one of many over the long and storied history of addressing childhood adversity in the state. In 2005, Dr. Sandra Bloom and her Philadelphia colleagues began their pioneering work on the Sanctuary model (see Sanctuary...

Building on the Foundation’s Trauma-Informed Philanthropy series, we are pleased to present a 10-month learning series, Investing in Community Resilience . This series, presented in partnership with the Scattergood Foundation, will provide vital information to funders and cooperative extension professionals for developing trauma-informed, healing-centered approaches in their work. Please join us for the sixth and final webinar in the series, Advocating for Trauma-Informed Policy and Systems...

Thank you to everyone who was able to join this month's CTIPP CAN call, and a special thank you to Dan Jurman, Dave Ellis, Commissioner Christine Beyer, and Angela Medrano Sanchez for their wonderful and informative presentations about the work in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We learned about strategies that have proven effective for launching statewide trauma-informed initiatives. If you were unable to join, would like to watch again, or want to share with others, you can find the call...

The May 19th CTIPP CAN call will address a critical question that many organizations are increasingly asking themselves - "How do we determine where on the spectrum my organization sits in regard to becoming fully trauma-informed, and what more can we be doing to become trauma-informed?" Our presenters are experts who have developed or are applying different tools for evaluating and providing answers to these questions. May 19th, 2-3:30pm ET/11am-12:30pm PT - How to Determine if Your...